


Idle Hands

by aunt_zelda



Category: Ravenous (1999)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Cannibalism, Dirty Talk, Dominance, Fight Sex, M/M, Murder Husbands, Rough Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:53:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5526074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if they both survived, and Ives promptly resumed his game of picking off the members of the garrison one by one with Boyd knowing the whole time what was happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idle Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> This is a treat for this prompt: http://mazephoenix.livejournal.com/45493.html
> 
> I watched the film earlier this fall because of your post recommending it on the Yuletide community, and I wanted to write you a treat because this movie, this movie is amazing and thank you so much for getting me to watch it. I was tempted to write a crossover with another fandom but wasn't sure you'd like that, so I'll save that for another day. 
> 
> Anyways this fic is ... very very dark. I hope I tagged it appropriately. If I missed any warnings please let me know and I'll add them.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this ... whatever I wrote. Happy Yuletide!

Boyd awakes with a groan, every inch of his body in pain. 

Which is wrong, because he was never supposed to wake up. He was supposed to die, pinned over Ives in that bear trap, ending things once and for all. 

“Easy, Lieutenant,” says an unfamiliar voice. “You’ve been through Hell, but you’re out of the woods now.”

That’s a lie. He survived, so he’s back in Hell. He never left. 

“Here, you need to eat, recover your strength.”

Boyd remembers the last thing he ate, and his stomach churns, even as his mouth waters. There’s a man nearby, healthy and strong, blood pumping in his veins. Boyd could reach out and … 

“No …” Boyd groans, turning his face away. His neck aches, his spine twinges, the muscles in his shoulders scream. 

“Lieutenant, be reasonable. You need to eat. The doc says it’s a miracle you survived, losing all that blood.”

Boyd stares at the face of a stranger, a stranger in uniform. “Who are you?”

“Captain Joseph. General Slauson sent me here to reestablish control of this garrison.” The Captain motions to the bowl of stew. “Eat, then we’ll discuss matters.”

Whatever was discovered, Boyd isn’t going to be executed quite yet. They wouldn’t waste food on a man about to be shot. 

Boyd fumbles with the spoon and eats. His dry mouth and aching stomach are soon relieved. “Sir, what happened?” he gasps out, when the worst of his hunger has been sated. 

The Captain leans back. “You were discovered here along with Private Ives in a bear trap. Colonel Hart was discovered dead in his office. And that, Lieutenant, is the extent of what I know. Private Ives has already told me his side of things. I want to hear what you have to say now.”

Private Ives? Boyd blinks. Is that some signal, some coded message that Ives wishes to send him now? Should Boyd tell the truth, or only a portion of the truth? 

“Sir, Colonel Hart … he went mad, sir.” That’s not a lie. Boyd continues, slowly, body still in incredible pain. “I think it was when so many of our search party were lost in the woods. Losing all those men, he took it badly, sir. He was our commander and he felt he’d failed us. He was never the same, when we returned to the garrison. And then, as I’m sure Private Ives has told you, men started going missing in the storms, and Colonel Hart became … he saw threats everywhere, sir, demons perhaps, in his mind, I don’t know. It was all we could do to hold together. I think he killed some of the others, thought they were going to kill him. It was all so confusing, people vanishing at night. Someone killed all the horses, I think it must have been Colonel Hart, to stop us from leaving. Private Ives and I tried to get away, hide, and then we fell … I think he set that trap, sir. I think he intended to kill us in it.” It’s not hard to imitate mounting horror, Boyd remembers the terror easily enough. He eats more of the stew. 

“Hmmm,” the Captain muses, staring at Boyd. “Well, that does match up, more or less, with what Private Ives told me. Colonel Hart going mad after losing so many of his men out there in the wilds, killing the horses, killing some of his own men, trying to kill you and Ives. What I don’t understand is who killed Colonel Hart. He couldn’t have done that to himself.”

Boyd decides to say nothing. Let the Captain decide for himself. “Sir, what happened to Mary?”

The Captain sneers. “The Indian ran off. Damn inconsiderate, but what can you expect from them, eh?”

Mary was smart. Mary knew what had happened, and she’d smartly fled. Boyd hopes she never stops running until she’s safe and among people who will believe her when she warns them of Boyd and Ives.

Boyd realizes, with a jolt, that his strength is returning, far faster than it should. 

“Sir, who prepared this stew?” he asks, with a sinking heart.

“Private Ives. He’s quite handy in the kitchen.”

Boyd’s stomach lurches. “Yes, sir,” he says faintly. “That he is.”

The Captain stands. “Rest up, Lieutenant. Perhaps it’s best to put this foul business behind us. Colonel Hart is dead and buried, these matters will rest with him.”

The Captain leaves. Boyd knows he should try to vomit, but he can’t bring himself to. The warm sensation in his stomach is too good, the energy and strength from whoever ended up in that stew is healing him. They died, their death should mean something, shouldn’t it? Giving him the strength to kill Ives?

Boyd knows he’s only deluding himself with that idea, but it helps him keep the food down.

He is slow to heal, as the meat is not always of human origin, but that suits Boyd just fine. It makes him feel human, not Wendigo, though the hunger never leaves him and the urge to rip out the nearest throat haunts him. He understands how men in the past would have been driven mad by these urges, the constant gnawing in the stomach. 

Boyd doesn’t want to die. Once, he did, every day, but never quite found the courage to force himself to it. It had helped having military men around him, giving him orders, a purpose of sorts. The small garrison had meant that there was always work to be done: wood to be cut and stacked, fires to be fed, animals to be hunted, snow to be shoveled. “Idle hands are the Devil’s instruments,” his mother had always said. How right she had been. The Devil had come and seen right into Boyd’s soul, picked out every sin to examine and inspect. Then he’d systematically destroyed everything around Boyd, driving him to sin again and tempting him to greater depravities. 

Is that his mission now? To kill the Devil? He tried once already, and failed. Can the Devil die? Not by Boyd’s hands, apparently. 

Though perhaps he did not try the right method. Would fire work? Boyd imagines the entire garrison ablaze, pinning Ives down as the flames drew closer and closer. 

As the days drag on, a dreadful thought begins to take root in Boyd’s mind. In his isolation, visited only by the doctor once daily for assistance with his bandages and a tray of food, he questions whether killing Ives is truly the right course of action. True, Ives is a monster, but he is a monster who knows what Boyd is and what he has done. If he kills Ives, Boyd will be utterly alone. From what he remembers of his horrid isolations in the past, it is not a fate he relishes. At least with Ives, Boyd is not alone. 

Ives does not visit him, to which Boyd has no idea how to react. Relief, fear, anger? Ives has apparently made himself into the perfect soldier, loyal and hardworking, dutiful to their new Captain. Boyd doesn’t bother trying to warn the man, remembering how such efforts were received last time. As the other soldiers become more and more unsettled by the landscape and rumors of murders at the garrison, Ives becomes the only man the Captain can trust. It sickens Boyd as no meal ever could. 

Ives begins to pick them off, of course. Boyd hears screams in the night, sees the soldiers watching the forest, terrified and isolated. A scout is sent for reinforcements, and never returns. The terror lasts for nearly two weeks. 

A soldier tries to desert and is caught by the Captain, who orders him hanged as punishment for his cowardice. Boyd watches through his room’s window as Ives, the only soldier who would obey the Captain in this, strings the man up. The man pleads for mercy right up until the noose chokes him, and even then he makes dreadful noises that Boyd can hear even through the walls of his room. Boyd looks at Ives, and Ives looks at him, and though there’s the entire length of the garrison between them, to Boyd it’s as if they’re inches apart. Ives licks his lips, glances at the man kicking in the air beside him, and then looks back to Boyd. 

Boyd leaves the window and slumps onto his bed. 

Ives comes for him that night. It’s their first true meeting since the near-deadly embrace. That seems lifetimes ago, though it has been barely three weeks. 

“Good evening, Lieutenant Boyd,” Ives says. It’s past midnight, only a few candles flickering. The shadows make Ives look even more threatening, more demonic. 

Boyd decides that silence is his best option. Ives has a way with words, so Boyd won’t give him any to play with for now. 

“You haven’t warned the dear Captain about me, told him anything at all. Now why is that?” Ives slinks closer, slides along the wall towards Boyd. 

Boyd wants to flinch, recoil, scramble away, but truly what would be the point? It would only entice Ives to give chase, and Boyd knows full well what happens when Ives runs down his prey. 

“It can’t be that you fear to implicate yourself, you didn’t fear death when you tried to take us both to the afterlife. So it’s not a noose you’re afraid of, is it?” Ives’ voice has the hint of a purr to it. He’s very close now, close enough to touch.

Boyd turns his head, making eye contact with Ives as best he can in the flickering light. Still he says nothing, makes no sounds. 

Ives’ purr becomes something deeper, more of a growl. He rests a knee on the edge of the mattress and leans down over Boyd, arms on either side of Boyd’s body. Boyd is penned in now, by Ives’ body, to move at all would require a fight.

“I had to hang that poor boy today,” Ives murmurs, swinging his leg up and over and straddling Boyd entirely, knees on either side of Boyd’s hips. “The Captain insisted. If he’d just waited, I could have come to the boy tonight and fed from his wrists, made it look like he took his own life, but no, the Captain insisted on a spectacle. Not that it will do him much good. The others are likely to mutiny or flee themselves, now that they can no longer trust their Captain.”

Boyd is inclined to agree, but that would require speaking. 

“Not much fun for me, dragging the poor boy to his death. He kept wailing about his family back East, begging me for mercy. If only he knew it was a mercy to spare him my teeth, eh?” Ives chuckles, teeth flashing in the candlelight. 

Boyd wonders where Ives is going with this rambling. If he were here to kill him, he’d have done it. Perhaps Ives too has grown lonely in his isolation, among men who do not know him, know what he truly is, who have not eaten flesh. Instantly, Boyd hates himself for thinking such thoughts, for reaching for a connection between himself and Ives, Ives who is a monster, the Devil, who killed so many, who would have happily killed and eaten him had he been given the chance. 

“Strangest thing, Boyd. Did you know men become greatly … excited, as they die?” 

Boyd blinks. 

“I’d witnessed it before, of course, but I had always believed it was something else that stirred them. Lust for blood, rather than lust for, well, other pleasures.”

Boyd has felt such lusts himself, felt them and been horrified. His body has urged him onto obscene acts in response to blood before. Ives and his dripping hand taunting him in the night … that had been one such moment. 

“The poor lad, for all his complaints as I hoisted him up, certainly had a fine enough time by the end. You’d have thought a woman had been stroking him, for how he responded.” Ives chuckled. “I almost pitied him, seeing him in such a state with no one to help him along. Had we been alone, I think I would have helped him. Pulled down his trousers and suckled his agony away.”

Boyd can’t hide his disgusted expression. Ives is foul, vile, obscene. 

“Have you never tasted that particular fluid, Boyd? All your years in the army? I can’t imagine you’re entirely ignorant.” Ives laughs, flicks a hand through Boyd’s hair, tangling his fingers in Boyd’s locks. “No one ever pulled you like this and pushed you down onto their intimate parts?”

Boyd will not discuss such matters with Ives. He will not discuss anything with Ives. Let the man think what he likes, let him imagine an entire regiment using Boyd like a whore, it doesn’t matter. Ives will do as he likes, and Boyd will not stop him, not now.

Ives waits, obviously hoping for a response. When he gets none, he sighs in exasperation and reaches down the length of Boyd’s body, resting his hand between Boyd’s legs.

“Well, Lieutenant, I suppose there’s one man I can help tonight.”

He begins with his hand, fingers grasping Boyd in a way no one has in a very long time. Boyd hates himself for responding, for his cock hardening under the ministrations and his breath coming in short gasps. Every noise he makes is apparently a victory to Ives; every movement Boyd squirms is ‘rewarded’ with faster caresses. 

It’s over embarrassingly quickly. Ives huffs a noise of surprise, and then chuckles, licking his fingers clean obscenely, lips wrapping around each digit and slurping.

“You taste delicious, Lieutenant. Just as I imagined.” Ives darts forward, pressing a kiss to Boyd’s lips. 

Boyd can taste himself on Ives’ lips. He wants to bite Ives, wants to fight him, pin him to the bed and … no. No he won’t do any of those things. Any of them would be what Ives wants him to do. 

Ives pulls away and leaps off the bed. 

So concludes the first nightly visitation by Ives, with Boyd confident that it will not be the last. 

The next occurs only three days later. There is a mutiny, soldiers shooting at one another, the Captain strung up by his own men, and Ives running about sowing chaos and fear and picking at the scraps. The survivors are slaughtered by sunset, their screams echoing through the mountains. 

Boyd, untouched and unaccounted for during the mutiny, waits in his bed. 

Ives arrives by nightfall, drenched in blood, his jacket missing and his thin shirt clinging to his body. Boyd needs no candlelight to see the glinting of Ives’ teeth. His hair is matted with dried blood, and his mouth and throat are painted dark with it.

“Come,” Ives says, holding out his hand.

Boyd sees no other option. He takes the hand and lets himself be led through the killing ground. Bodies are strewn here and there, and above it all, the doomed Captain swings, sightless eyes gazing across his fallen soldiers. Boyd shudders, he can’t help himself. 

Ives pounces on him, pins him to the bloodied earth and has him then and there, rips Boyd’s clothing from his body and _ruts_. Boyd can’t tell if Ives derives pleasure from the act or if it’s merely a release of all the energies accumulated after his feast. Ives’ nails leave cuts in Boyd’s shoulders, and when he spills himself inside Boyd and over Boyd’s thighs, he isn’t done then. He flips Boyd over and laughs, wrapping a filthy hand around Boyd’s cock.

Boyd, shocked at himself, stares at yet another betrayal by his body. He cannot trust his mouth, his stomach, and now it seems, even this piece of himself has been taken by Ives and the foul hunger. 

Ives presses fingers into himself and then slides onto Boyd’s cock, groaning with obvious pleasure. It hurts, Ives is tight and they aren’t slick enough, the blood and saliva aren’t sufficient to make things easy. Boyd struggles weakly in an effort to escape, it’s pointless he knows but he has to at least try, Ives has gone too far now. In response, Ives moans intently and sinks lower onto Boyd. Boyd gives up on escape and watches as Ives pleasures himself. It’s not long before Ives is hard again, though it can’t have been more than a few minutes and no man is that fast to recover his passion. Another Wendigo talent then, one no legend would ever recount. 

Ives wraps his fingers around his cock, and when he spurts it splatters across Boyd’s chest. Warm, wet, sticky as tree sap, it feels more like blood than anything else. Boyd recoils and Ives laughs at him before sliding off of his body and slinking away to feed on one of the corpses. 

Boyd crawls back to his bed and collapses, filthy in the sheets, and succumbs to sleep. 

The next day passes quietly. Boyd cannot bring himself to go outside, to see the bodies I the light of day. He washes himself as best he can, dresses, and waits. 

Ives comes at sundown, bowl in hand, brandishing a spoon like a weapon. 

“You’re going to eat this.” Ives declares, setting the bowl before Boyd. 

Boyd stares at him silently.

“I’m growing bored with you, Boyd. I haven’t broken you, have I?” Ives taunts. 

Perhaps he has. Boyd doesn’t know anymore. He wants to kill Ives, but he doesn’t want to be lonely. He can have his freedom, but at the cost of isolation for the rest of his days. And that’s assuming he can actually kill the Devil, where countless others have failed before, including himself. 

“Come on, Lieutenant, we were having so much fun!” Ives cajoles, sitting beside him on the bed. “Admit it, my idea of running this place ourselves and picking off the travelers whenever we get hungry, you like it, don’t you? You want it too. Otherwise you’d have told the Captain about me. You’d have tried to stop me. You’d have at least run away as soon as your wounds had healed.”

Is that true? It sounds likely. 

“And then there’s the other night. That can’t have been blood lust, you haven’t been eating the meat.” Ives grins. There’s dried blood on his moustache. “Is that it, Lieutenant Boyd? You’ve fallen into a pit of lust?”

That would make things easier, that is true. Boyd considers the idea, turns it over and over in his mind. Him and Ives, entwined for eternity, consuming those unfortunate enough to cross their paths. 

Well, perhaps not eternity. Perhaps just until Boyd recovers enough of his strength to fight Ives properly again. Perhaps until Boyd can muster enough resolve to do the honorable thing and bring Ives to an end, and himself alongside him, ridding the world of their cursed hunger. 

Boyd dips the spoon into the bowl, and raises it to his lips. He chews the meat and swallows. Strength blossoms within him. 

Ives smiles broadly. 

Boyd finishes the bowl, then sets it aside. He’s pleased to see Ives tense, aware of Boyd’s renewed strength after such a meal. 

“My turn,” Boyd says simply, and tackles Ives onto the bed. 

Ives laughs, to spur him on, Boyd has no doubt, but he doesn’t particularly care. Ives will do as he likes, and Boyd will just have to work with that. 

“Can I trust you with my cock in your mouth?” Boyd asks, yanking on Ives’ hair.

“Why don’t we find out?” Ives licks his lips. 

Boyd decides that no, he’s not ready for that test. He pins Ives to the mattress and strips him, methodically, making Ives whine with impatience. 

“Changed my mind,” Boyd murmurs. 

“Get on with it!” Ives hisses. 

Boyd’s not sure why Ives is so eager to speed things up. After all, they have eternity to keep playing this game.


End file.
